


Road Rage

by camwolfe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4370351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camwolfe/pseuds/camwolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Morning,” she said cheerfully. Steve jumped a little, nearly spilling his coffee. </p>
<p>“Uh, hi,” he said. “Why are you outside of my apartment?” </p>
<p>Natasha smiled at him and patted the hood of the car. “I’m here to teach you how to drive.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Road Rage

**Author's Note:**

> There's no real point to this, other than that I love stories about Steve and Natasha doing mundane friend things. 
> 
> Also because I think that Steve would have the worst road rage. 
> 
> Post avengers, pre-CATWS!

Natasha was sitting comfortably on the hood of the car when Steve walked by.

“Morning,” she said cheerfully. Steve jumped a little, nearly spilling his coffee.

“Uh, hi,” he said. “Why are you outside of my apartment?”

Natasha smiled at him and patted the hood of the car. It was a nice blue SUV, the kind of generic car that a young family of four would buy to take their kids to soccer practice in the evenings. It handled well, though, and Natasha figured that Steve would get the hang of it pretty quickly.

I’m here to teach you how to drive," she said.

Steve blinked at her. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face was lined and tense. “I know how to drive.”

“You know how to make a car move. Do you know all the twenty-first century rules of the road?”

Steve frowned and took a sip of his coffee. “I can figure it out.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow at him. “Have you tried it yet?”

“Well, no, but – “

“But you didn’t need a car in New York,” Natasha finished for him. “Now you’re in DC, and you’re going to need to drive.”

“I’ve only been here for a few days,” Steve protested weakly.

“Exactly!” Natasha said cheerfully. “So now’s the time to learn.”

“I have plans today,” Steve tried.

“No, you don’t.”

Steve made a face. “Okay, no, I don’t. Why are you offering to help me, though? Did Fury put you up to this?”

“Nope. Just figured you’d need some help.”

The real answer was that she didn’t have any plans either, and she didn’t particularly want to spend another morning sitting by herself in her apartment.

“Natasha, I’m really fine with driving, you don’t have to – “

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him. “What if you hit another car while you’re driving because you didn’t know that they had the right of way at that intersection?”

Steve stared at her, then visibly deflated. “You’re right.”

Natasha smiled.

Steve sighed and looked mournfully at his coffee cup. “Can I bring my Starbucks?”

“Of course.”

Steve cast one wistful look at his apartment and got into the car.

 

“Is this yours?” he asked as he got settled into the seat. Natasha hopped into the passenger’s side, pulling the door shut behind her.

“Nope,” she said, handing him the keys. “It’s a rental from SHIELD, so try not to crash it.”

Steve smiled a little. “I thought this was a little too… suburban for you.”

“Well, I was going to bring my Jaguar, but it’s not the best for stop-and-go traffic.”

“Probably pretty good in a car chase, though.”

“It is,” Natasha said. "But for now we’re stuck with this one. Just pretend that you’re a soccer mom on your way to pick up some groceries for dinner. Your name can be Barb. Or Tracy. Take your pick.”

Steve laughed, some of the tension finally draining out of his shoulders. “Barb sounds good, but only if you’ll be my husband named Bill.”

“Bill and Barb,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “I like it. I’m an insurance claims manager who likes to watch football after work. You like baking cookies and drinking too much wine with dinner.”

“Our children’s names all start with the same letter,” Steve said as he put the key in the ignition and started the car.

“Let’s make them all ‘B’,” Natasha said. “Keep the theme going.”

Steve put the car in drive and then sat back expectantly. “Where to?”

“Okay, hold on,” Natasha said. “Put it back in park, I have to show you some things first.”

She pointed out the various features of the car, including the built-in GPS and back up camera. She showed him how to use the windshield wipers and the various headlight settings.

“Alright,” Steve admitted when she’d finished. “I didn’t know most of that.”

“That’s what I thought,” Natasha said with a smirk. Steve shook his head at her.

“Can we go now?”

“Yep,” Natasha said, settling back in her seat. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

Steve carefully pulled the car away from the curb. He drove slowly at first, clearly getting used to the feel of the car.

Natasha directed him to a more suburban neighbourhood. They practiced various intersections, and Natasha even made him parallel park.

“This is so easy,” Steve said as he slid the car neatly into the parking spot. “The trucks we used to drive were a hell of a lot harder to park.”

“When did you learn to drive?” Natasha asked. She pointed to the next intersection, and Steve shifted the car into drive again.

“During the war,” Steve said. He kept his eyes fixed on the road. “Kind of learned the hard way.”

“What do you mean?”

A hint of a smile crossed Steve’s face. “We started off chasing some Nazis. Turned out that there were a lot more of them than there were of us, and they ended up chasing us instead."

“And I’m guessing driving was involved somehow?”

“We found a truck,” Steve said offhandedly. “Bucky was shooting at them, so I had to drive. He just yelled instructions at me.”

Natasha smiled, but she kept a close eye on Steve. Sure enough, his face was starting to close up and grow distant again.

“And that worked?” she asked.

Steve shrugged. “Well, Bucky did crack his head on a tree branch and I ran over a few bushes, but we made it out and took some Nazis with us.”

“A job well done, then.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. He still turned the corner when Natasha indicated, but his shoulders were tense and his hands were clenched on the steering wheel.

“Let’s get pizza,” Natasha said impulsively. “Pull over up there, I know a good place.”

Steve blinked, and visibly shook himself out of whatever headspace he’d gotten into. “It’s not even noon yet.”

“So?” Natasha asked. “There’s no set time to eat pizza.”

“I think you’re spending too much time with Clint.”

“Probably,” Natasha agreed. “Look, get that spot up there.”

 

Steve parked the car, they had some pizza, and then they headed back out onto the road.

They were making their way back into the heart of the city when Natasha noticed the car on their right.

It was just ahead of them, and it swerved slightly into their lane before correcting itself. It wasn’t anything drastic and Steve didn’t even notice, but Natasha kept her eye on it.

Sure enough, they soon pulled up next to the car as they drove down the street. Natasha glanced through the car window, and saw that the woman was frowning down at her cell phone as she drove.

“Ugh,” Natasha said.

“What?” Steve asked.

“That woman’s texting,” Natasha said, glaring out the window at her.

“While she’s driving?” Steve said indignantly. “Isn’t that dangerous? There’s no way she can watch the road and her phone at the same time.”

“Exactly,” Natasha said. Just then, the woman swerved directly into their lane.

Natasha instinctively pushed herself away from the side door. Steve swore and swerved into the lane next to them in turn.

Thankfully, the car only scraped theirs before the woman looked up and frantically spun the wheel. Both her car and theirs’ skidded to a stop as Steve slammed on the brakes.

“Are you okay?” Steve asked, his hands till tense on the wheel.

“Of course,” Natasha said. “That’s a nice scrape on the side of the car, though.”

Steve growled and got out of the car before Natasha could grab his sleeve.

“Steve!” she hissed through the open driver’s door. Steve ignored her and walked around to where the woman was still sitting in her car, her eyes wide.

Natasha sighed and grabbed her phone. She might as well text SHIELD’s PR team and tell them to get ready in advance.

“Excuse me,” Steve said sharply, leaning down so that he could speak into the woman’s open window. “Are you alright?”

The woman stared at him, her phone still clutched in her hand. “Yes?”

“Good,” Steve said, and then narrowed his eyes. “Ma’am, are you aware that you just hit us with your car?”

“Yeah,” the woman said. “I’m really sorry.  I can get you my insurance info.”

Steve’s shoulders started to tense. “You were texting as you were driving.”

“No I wasn’t,” the woman said automatically.

“Yes,” Steve said. “You were. My friend here saw you.”

“I wasn’t on my phone!” the woman protested.

“Then why did you swerve into our lane?”

“It was an accident!”

“An accident caused by the fact that you were on your phone!” 

The woman glanced over at Natasha, who was still sitting in the car, watching them. Most of the other cars on the road were just changing lanes to get around them, but a few had stopped to watch the proceedings.

The woman glanced at Natasha, glanced at Steve, and then hit the gas.

Her car tires squealed and the car jumped forward, but it had barely moved a foot when Steve grabbed onto the window frame and held on.

“What the hell?” the woman screamed as her tires spun uselessly against the ground. “What the fuck?”

Natasha sighed again, noticing that two bystanders already had their phones out and were filming. She opened the car door and got out, pulling the hood of her jacket up so that the cameras wouldn’t get her face.

She slid under Steve’s arm and climbed half into the window of the woman’s car. She reached over the woman and threw the car into park, grabbing the keys from the ignition and turned the engine off because she crawled out again.

The woman sat frozen, staring at Steve and Natasha with wide eyes. Natasha gently plucked the phone out of her hands and passed it to Steve, who had really worked himself up by now.

“You could have killed someone,” he ranted. “You’re lucky it was just us you hit. What if it had been a family? What if you’d paralyzed someone?”

“I…” the woman said helplessly.

Steve’s hand clenched around the woman’s phone, and Natasha heard the distinct sound of cracking metal and glass. Sure enough, small pieces of the phone started to trickle out of Steve’s fist.

Steve glanced down at his hand with a small frown. “Oops.”

“Alright,” Natasha said decisively. “Time to go.”

She grabbed Steve’s arm and dragged him back to their car. She shoved him into the passenger’s seat and hurried around to the driver’s side.

“I can drive,” Steve said. “I’m fine.”

“I know you can,” Natasha responded as she threw the car back into drive and hit the gas. "But you aren’t used to driving in the city.”

“We just drove around in circles for hours!”

“And now,” Natasha said, with a much drama as she could muster, “we’re going to see how quickly we can get back to SHIELD.”

She stepped on the gas and spun the wheel, sending them careening into an alley. Steve yelped.

“You know,” she said as she took another corner at full speed. “I almost like driving this more than my Jaguar.”

“We’re going to die,” Steve said solemnly as he gripped the door handle and braced himself against the dashboard.

“Not on my watch, Rogers,” Natasha said with a grin. Steve yelped again as the car jumped back out onto the main road.

 

They were in the newspapers for the next two weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com). Come talk to me about Steve yelling at other drivers out his car window and everyone in the car with him staring in horror


End file.
